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Perfectionism Kills

My brain is wired funnily.

Serge Faldin
5 min readJan 30, 2020

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“Ok, I need to be 1% better each day, because that would lead to ~3700% per year by compound interest…And I need to be 1% better in all areas of life, ok, let’s see. I meditated, I ate healthily, I learned a thing or two…damn, I forgot to go to the gym…”

That was the thought process I had in my head 2 seconds before I started blaming myself.

My brain is wired funnily: it thinks that I have to be #1 at everything I do. I need to be the smartest, the fittest, the strongest, the healthiest, the richest, etc.,

What will happen if I am not? Nobody will love me.

Such perfectionism can kill you. Or at least it can make your life an ongoing misery. I didn’t find any valuable answers to this problem on the Internet, so I decided to write this piece.

For as long as I can remember, I did things brilliantly. When I was a kid, the adults were amazed by my ability to do my homework without a need for help or a kick in the butt. I was always serious and called a ‘small professor’ — there are photos of me standing with a briefcase at five years old.

No kid should ever have a briefcase.

As I grew older, I started to view this strive for perfectionism as a superpower. I didn’t obsess about homework or…

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Serge Faldin
Serge Faldin

Written by Serge Faldin

Honest thoughts. Unpopular opinions. Not necessarily true or smart. | Bylines: The Guardian, Truthout, Meduza, Prospect | Personal essays: sergeys.substack.com

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